My Barsey miracle with Soma's Camps

Remember The Canterbury Tales? Pilgrims going to the shrine of Saint Becket in the Canterbury Cathedral from Southwark in England in the Middle Ages, who meet at an inn and spend the sojourn together taking turns to tell stories? Well, no you don’t, of course. As for me, I had to read Chaucer’s masterpiece as part of my post graduation syllabus, our professor, Dr. Sajni Mukherjee retelling it with her characteristic humour in our JU first floor PG classroom. Since then, I had often wondered how it would feel to travel as part of a motley clique and had also conjured up mental images of faces very similar to that of the pilgrims. Real life, however, is different from fiction, but it did spring a surprise lately, when I joined a trekking expedition with Soma’s Camps - to journey through the Rhododendron sanctuary of Barsey in the Singalila Range of the Himalayas. The range forms a natural border with Nepal in the West and is one of the most sought after trekking routes because of the views of the Mount Everest and the Kanchenjunga it offers. So though not strictly a religious pilgrimage like the Canterburians but definitely one of a kind, if you consider yourself a worshipper of Nature. Nature there was – in abundance – the flora and the fauna waiting to overwhelm you at every bend and corner.

Will come to that in a bit.

Red Rhododendron

A chance encounter with a high school senior (Director of Soma’s Camps) in the Gariahat Westside shopping mall. A hesitant confession from me with a sigh: “You know, I have always wanted to trek, but never got a chance.” A reassuring pat in the back from Soma with “Why don’t you come with us?” And then a squeal of delight and a resounding YES! A string of correspondence and a house visit later, I found myself stationed at Sealdah with a backpack stashed with a sleeping bag and antibiotics to ward off hill diarrhea. It was pouring that evening and I thought maybe this was Nature’s premonitory warning. I reached the station and was introduced to a number of new faces – none of which resembled the Canterbury pilgrims.

Our group

There was an elegant school teacher, a witty mathematician and a college professor with his sweet natured daughter. A software developer travelling with his son and his Canon 5D Mark III. A peal of laughter drew my attention to a gang of three girls just past their teenage – talking animatedly through their doe eyes. A very sombre school girl, who was responding in monosyllables, only to reveal in due course what a cheek she hid under that initial reticence. Our trek lead was ably assisted by her two lieutenants – a post grad student of history, who never tired of helping us through the trek; and her own son, who kept the prank quotient of the group high all the time. And then there were me and my son.

On the way

We boarded the Kanchankanya Express at 9 in the evening and hastily polished a home-cooked supply of cauliflower paratha and keema curry off our palms, eating without plates. Soon it was time to turn off the lights and turn in for the night. A seven-hour car ride to Hiley was waiting for us next morning. I have a long history of motion sickness and the challenge for me was simply to not fall sick in the drive up the winding terrain. At the NJP station we had a hearty breakfast of aloo paratha and French toasts. Kids had already bonded well and were fighting over a bottle of coke. Dreading the sharp hairpin bends ahead, I popped a Zopher while praying to mother Nature to not let me down this time. I do not know if it was the company or the medicine, but for the first time in my life I did not feel the urge to puke the pristine mountains wet with watery vomit. Yes, you get the picture, right? Ugh!

 After a few hours we stopped at Jorethang – a transit junction for tourists on their way up. A quick lunch of momos and thukpa later, we were in another car to Hiley. A talkative Sherpa who drove us shared his insights of the local life. The sight on the way was a treat no less. Quaint old cottages - some wooden, some concrete, some with pink curtains, some green, some flaunting a dish antenna, some with broken furniture visible on the porches made it clear that it was a mixed economic zone. Then there were apple-cheeked kids with snot lined noses in school uniforms smiling and waving at us. The flowers made for a Technicolor canvas on both sides – orange, yellow, red, white, cream, violet, pink – laced within the sylvan frame of lush green trees. The restless Teesta dashed across boulders. We also crossed Rangeet, a tributary, nonetheless tumultuous in its course. What struck me on the way was the beautiful contrast between arid and fertile slopes of the mountains. Some were really bare and fallow. Some as bountiful as an overflowing harvest.

We arrived at Hiley after sun down to be greeted by a team of jolly innkeepers. Four round shaped huts lining the ridge of a mountain formed our haunt for the night. It was a nameless inn/hotel. Or a homestay of a kind. One hut would house the men, the other, women. And the rest of the two huts served as the kitchen and the dining room. Piping hot tea and biscuits welcomed us in, followed by crisp pakodas. We crowded the kitchen in search of warmth since a sudden drizzle had brought the temperature shockingly down. The story telling session started in the Canterbury tradition as a modest dinner of roti, sabzi and chicken was being cooked in the adjacent kitchen. One of us shared an anecdote from his travels in Tadoba where he had a classic twin fall with a friend right in front of a tiger. Another of us recounted how he had almost experienced a ghost in one of the hostels of the Ramkrishna Mission. This, I guess, set the tone for the bhooter golpo (ghost stories) that would accompany us for the rest of our trip.

Hut at Hiley

We had a difficult night, finding the perfect posture in bed for the maximum heat. For the first time, I had strangers as bed fellows that night. Snuggling close to them, I drifted off to sleep dreaming of sharing a cup of tea with some serious looking red pandas. And a voice much like Master Shifu’s was asking me to wrap a scarf around my neck. At the crack of the dawn I opened my eyes to a gorgeous sight of a sunrise backlighting a golden range of mountains. All aglow orange in the soft first rays.

The gateway to Barsey

The gateway to Barsey was right next to our stay. We had to trudge across the forest for 4.5 kms to reach the Sikkim Government’s Trekker’s hut, where we would stay the next two days. Off we set for the sanctuary. Despite the sunrise, it was a damp day, the sun quickly hiding behind clouds after a brief appearance, the vestiges of the previous night’s rainfall still fresh on every leaf and moss of the walk. It was a welcome relief from our tropical scorch. 

The trail

Clouds were creeping into our path, almost gagging us at times. We went haltingly, admiring every lichen, every petal, every insect, every tiny spider web on the way. The gravel road is canopied by trees and their mossy branches. With the thick foliage shading the course, the road took a dark mysterious look. The path isn't paved for regular traffic. At best two people can walk side by side, and mostly it was a single file road with a leafy green gorge on one side, and a hilly forest slope on the other. I had one consolation that even if I slipped and fell, the rhodo roots would break it to preserve me as a hanging human specimen to the hill monkeys. But on the other hand, signboards warned us of Himalayan black bears and I could also turn fast food in a matter of minutes. I mumbled to myself that bears and the pandas are reclusive by nature and all I had to do was break into a song to keep them away. I made a mental note of the melody to scream if the situation demanded it.

By the time we reached the trekker’s haunt, my nose had turned a brilliant red in the frost and I had lost sensation of the lips and the fingers. We were at 10,000 feet above sea level and the incessant rain was not helping with the temperature. The high point of that day was the lunch the hosts served. Hot steaming rice, dal, papad, cauliflower curry and eggs cooked in the Nepali way. And the wood fire lent a subtle smoked flavor to the spread. Washing hands in lukewarm water after the meal, we crept upstairs into the dormitory – a polished wooden thatch above a large rectangular hall provided with a window with a broken glass pane. Beds of one mattress each were lined up one after the other on the floor. A bright red flower poster stuck on with red cello tape was trying its best to shield us from the cold outside. After looking at live flowers all through the trail in such great numbers, straining your eyes as its printed version was kind of strange though. We realised there was no electricity and soon we would have to depend on the two slim candles that the hut manager provided. It was a perfect setting for a horror movie, the candle light creating eerie shadows of the most innocent stuff and lending a spooky touch to the huge hall. At one point I realised I was speaking in whispers, from under the borrowed blankets. And the ghost stories continued unabated - you couldn't figure if the goosebumps on your skin were because of the chill in the air or the thrill in the storytelling!

The kids had begun setting up their tents outside. Their excitement at the prospect of sleeping under the skies without a solid roof was kind of infectious. We cancelled the next trek to Gurastal because of two reasons. One, it was raining hard. The uphill climb would be dangerously slippery. Two, the rare species of the purple and yellow rhododendrons that grow up there, weren't in season this year. Instead we marched to a bird watchers’ tower around 2 kms away. Just that our noisy giggly party seemed to scare our winged friends away, for we saw none at all. All we could see was cloud and the dark green forest as far as our sights went. On our way back we munched on khakras, raisins and chocolate biscuits brought in by Soma's teams (no wonder even after all that walking and climbing I lost not an ounce of body weight!). Kids enjoyed like never before, sometimes jumping on one another, sometimes breaking into a mock fight with bamboo sticks. At 4 in the afternoon we recorded the temperature outside – 8 degrees it said. Someone said it would go sub zero in the night.

I shivered in anticipation.

We met good people at the hut. Three families of three – a group of nine. Then a team of four surgeons with a shared passion for photographing the Kanchenjunga. The doctors had come hoping to capture the mighty peak in the moonlight. It was going to be full moon that night, so if all went well, and the clouds dispelled, it would be a rare sight to remember. However, being seasoned trekkers, they took a look at the sky and shook their heads sadly. “There is no hope. This cloud is not going anywhere. There is no point staying.”

And they packed their bags and left. Their disappointment was contagious. Some of us started feeling a little jaded with the constant rains and the dark skies. Fierce winds had started blowing as well. A silent prayer went round my mind, as my teeth clattered in the freezing cold – will the winds drive the rain clouds away tonight?

We turned in early that night after a dinner of roti, aloo-matar and chicken curry. At around 3-4 in the night, a small voice called “Maa, I have to pee.” A friend volunteered to accompany my son to the toilet outside. Soon afterwards, we heard the sound of boots running up the stairs as if in a great hurry.

“Get up, you all. Look out the window! Right NOW!” said a voice with tremendous urgency, which quickly rattled us out of our slumber party.

We rushed out of our sleeping bags, blankets and duvets to reach the broken window. By then someone had opened the pane and we were all staring bewildered at a silver Kanchenjunga! Never did I imagine that all along the peaks were so close to us. It seemed as if we could run and reach the peaks in a matter of minutes. The clouds were gone. The sky was clear. And there stood the third highest peak of the world under a starlit sky. We ran downstairs and scrambled outside in our windcheaters. Looking at the peak and the stars, I suddenly felt so small, so inconsequential. We puny mortals with our Lilliput frames, our petty egos, our unending complaints, wants and desires – all looked funny in comparison.

All of a sudden it started making sense to me – the trek, the rain, the cloud, the winds – as if part of a predestined design. This year, the Rhododendrons were almost half as much in bloom as some other years. I had come expecting hills breaking out in multi-hue blossoms. I had visualized pink, red, white, yellow rolling mountains and valleys around. I had heard stories of the sanctuary turning the hills into full-bloomed colour pots and here I was looking at the flowers alright, but not exactly in the magnitude I had hoped. Would I ever have the opportunity to be back here to witness the hills changing colours as the rhodos went full bloom in future? I wasn't so sure.

I had no idea that Nature had planned a different gift for me. I had seen the Kanchenjunga on earlier trips too – once from Gangtok, and the other time from Rishyap. But those sightings were of a distant kind. Never had the peak touched me like this. Now as the sun came up, the stalwart stood close to us, letting the sun touch its glory one by one with its rays. Orange, pink, yellow, white – the colours took turns as the rays hit the snowy crown. The cameras were out, working double shifts. Some were trying to identify which was Kabru, which was Pandim beside the Kanchenjunga. 

I stood looking at the towering heads for a long time, perched on a stone wall, trying to seize the moment for later. I knew my mission was done. In life so many our goals are thwarted, so many hopes broken. And we are handed down things we never asked for. It is only when you are close to nature, you realize the divinity in its plans – plans so different from the human ones, so more powerful than ours. You are never in control – no matter how hard you try to imagine otherwise. I learned my lesson. It wasn’t ever going to be flowers for me, but maybe a coarser terrain, a miracle carved out in rock and snow. 

Our trek leader, Soma Majumdar Paul

I had had my miracle.

Thanks to Soma’s Camps for facilitating this 

miracle for me! And taking such good care of first time trekkkers like me.

Note: I have not named any of my fellow trekkers in this story as I wasn't sure they would like that.

Photo courtesy: Debjit Biswas

© Sudeshna Sanyal